Richardson is so the Girls' IT COY right naw

The Lenape girls' track team sure had numbers to start the season -- just not all positive ones.

Twelve seniors took turns leading the team during stretches, each counting down the seconds until it was time to switch over. Hanging over their heads from the gym rafters were zero championship banners. Zero also marks the team's scoring output at the indoor state championship last year.

However, coach Gerald Richardson and his staff spoke of different numbers to start the season, as in 53, as in the days until the Indians would march into the Bennett Center in Toms River and capture the Group 4 state relays championship.

Go figure.

"To be honest I didn't know whether we were a state championship team, but I knew we were very competitive," said Richardson, a six-year coach.

For being among the first to believe, and matching his level of optimism with an equal amount of dedication -- the kind tested by 6 a.m. high-jump practices -- Richardson is the Courier-Post Girls' Indoor Track Coach of the Year. Richardson, a special education teacher at Lenape, had his reasons to dream. Last winter before the shutout, Lenape played runner-up to Southern Regional at the relay championships.

That spring at the Group 4 sectional meet his team took second again.

A week later at the Group 4 state championships the Indians showed what a difference a season makes, scoring 13 points -- 13 more than it had in the winter meet -- to place 17th overall.

Southern Regional won all of the above last year and remained formidable despite graduating Danielle Tauro; they had a spare All-American, Jillian Smith, to carry it.

Richardson still believed a silver lining was there, somewhere, but with the team's seasoned talent not getting any younger and its futility streak not getting any shorter, he and the team sought only championship gold.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go out and have so many good athletes on one team," senior Lindsey Walsh said. "We wanted to set some records that will be here for a while."

Relay wins against the likes of Camden and Woodrow Wilson instilled some confidence into the team and at a good time; Richardson's countdown rolled to zero, when it would face Southern Regional at the state Group 4 relays.

Richardson knew his team was up for the challenge.

"He knows if somebody ran a good race or a disappointing race, if somebody ran or threw a personal best," said Erika Griffith, a senior co-captain. "He knows this team too well."

Flexing its depth, Lenape scored 54 points to stun Southern, beating its nemesis by 23 points en route to claiming the relay championship. History was surely made; however, the date remains in question for Richardson.

"I tell the girls that championships are won Monday through Friday, not on Saturday," he said. "I think that's when they won the championship."

When titles are lost is another matter. Lenape fell to Southern Regional by 2.5 points at the Group 4 sectional championship.

But the heart of this team -- composed of Walsh, Erika Griffith, Miya Johnson, Moira Cunningham, Brianna Beddall, Jennifer Houghton, Caitlin Orr and others -- knows how to beat back.

Everyone bettered her performance a week later at the Group 4 state championship, enough so to score 48 points -- again, a 48-point improvement over 2007 -- and defeat Southern by five.

At that moment, the hopeful message etched on preseason T-shirts given out by Richardson faded obsolete.

It read: "One Team, One Mission."

Mission accomplished.